While the pot thing is innocuous, it's still tacky optics. And the finger at the flag thing is worse. How would the party have allowed that to slip through? Wouldn't candidates be required to shut down all personal social media accounts? As a minimum precaution? This just seems like an incredibly stupid mistake.

yep while millions if not billions over the years went to PC cronies, a drained heritage fund, no royalties collected and they wanna freak over pot pics on a tee shirt, and stupid youth actions, and whose to know....she might have beem saying "fuck you stehen harper" while looking at the flag and fingering. i know i have many times.

After attacking these Premier Notley these guys and now scared shitless because she won, and remembers what they did, so they are kissing her ass as much as they can, hoping she'll forgive them. And she likely will, she has them right where she wants them.

if you wanna go down the path of worry about who gets credit, or not, then go all the way back and carry on because she didn't, nor does every Canadian woman politician thank Nellie McClung every time they won, or hell even speak.

after all, according to your style of thinking, if not for Nellie's INCREDIBLE work, we women wouldn't be where we are today.

lol....terry terry terry it's been my experience, from being in contact with my mom's NDP, and women in politics, reality not one ground breaking woman is forgotten, nor man either if the truth be told. they all have memories like elephants has been my experience. they know the spirits of each and every one stands with them and they don't need to be name dropped.

lol....terry terry terry it's been my experience, from being in contact with my mom's NDP, and women in politics, reality not one ground breaking woman is forgotten, nor man either if the truth be told. they all have memories like elephants has been my experience. they know the spirits of each and every one stands with them and they don't need to be name dropped.

But the Alberta NDP supports PR. The party ran on it in the last election, and in January, its platform, which is still cached online, was still promising that an NDP government would “set up a system of proportional representation.”

In February, they quietly dropped that sentence, and they did not campaign on PR.

Federal NDP MP Craig Scott, who is pushing a sensible and detailed PR proposal, will nudge Notley to move, but she knows that if she puts PR in place, she will never get another majority.

This is why we don’t have proportional representation.

Although it is clearly superior to the first-past-the-post system, it is worse for governing parties, and only their votes count.

But the Alberta NDP supports PR. The party ran on it in the last election, and in January, its platform, which is still cached online, was still promising that an NDP government would “set up a system of proportional representation.”

In February, they quietly dropped that sentence, and they did not campaign on PR.

Federal NDP MP Craig Scott, who is pushing a sensible and detailed PR proposal, will nudge Notley to move, but she knows that if she puts PR in place, she will never get another majority.

This is why we don’t have proportional representation.

Although it is clearly superior to the first-past-the-post system, it is worse for governing parties, and only their votes count.

Was the original position on PR voted on by party members? How about the change in position?

But the Alberta NDP supports PR. The party ran on it in the last election, and in January, its platform, which is still cached online, was still promising that an NDP government would “set up a system of proportional representation.”

In February, they quietly dropped that sentence, and they did not campaign on PR.

Federal NDP MP Craig Scott, who is pushing a sensible and detailed PR proposal, will nudge Notley to move, but she knows that if she puts PR in place, she will never get another majority.

This is why we don’t have proportional representation.

Although it is clearly superior to the first-past-the-post system, it is worse for governing parties, and only their votes count.

Was the original position on PR voted on by party members? How about the change in position?

Good question. My guess is that party members continued to support p.r. but the higher ups in the NDP were less supportive. Here in BC a similar thing happened in the 2013 election. P.r. was also a policy of the BC NDP but when the election came it was not placed on the election platform. Maybe when party executives and higher ups see that they may win power and positions through a phoney FPTP majority they become less enthusiastic about p.r.?

Alberta's 'old guard' needs to change tune, says head of EEDC'The first thing we heard was that the economy was going into the toilet,' says Brad Ferguson

The "old guard" in Alberta — the well-entrenched, long-time Tory supporters who are predicting economic Armageddon — have a choice to make now that the NDP has taken charge, says Brad Ferguson.

The president and CEO of Edmonton Economic Development Corporation wrote a blog on Friday titled The King is Dead; Long Live the Queen.

His first three sentences were: "The grumpiness is deafening. The astonishment is mind-numbing. And the continued entitlement is unbelievable."

Ferguson was reacting to the doom-and-gloom predictions made by many in the business community after last week's election saw a 44-year Tory dynasty swept aside by the orange wave of Rachel Notley and the NDP.

"It was very intentional, in terms of what I was trying to do on the blog," Ferguson told CBC News on Monday.

"It really took a look at kind of an old guard here, that wasn't necessarily all that happy with the outcome of the NDP government. They have a choice right now. You can sit around and be grumpy about it, or you can keep calm and carry on, and actually realize there are a lot of positive things that are going to come of this."

Ferguson said some business leaders have suggested Alberta will no longer be a good place to invest, to start a company, or to grow an existing one.

"The first thing I believe we heard was that, basically, the economy was going into the toilet," he said. "So we had to calm that down."

The reality, he said, is that province and its two major cities are changing quickly, and business leaders now have the opportunity to change with the times.

I guess when you are used to running the show you get a bit arrogant, but the oilpatch CEOs gotta bit a dim crowd, as everytime they open their mouth and attack the NDP they are just shooting themselves in the foot and lowering the price of their company's stock. I doubt shareholders are going to put up with their losing money mentality and will boot them out if they don't quickly smarten up. At least the Encana CEO gets it.

A member of my family made an interesting observation regarding the sole Liberal remaining in the legislature, Calgary Mountainview's Dr. Swann... "is there any reason that Rachel couldn't invite him to join the cabinet as the health minister?" Frankly, I don't see any constitutional barriers to her doing so...

While I doubt it would occur to the ANDP, it would be a bold way of indicating that the new political reality in Alberta was breaking from the old one - so long, of course, as it wasn't conditional on his crossing the floor.

A member of my family made an interesting observation regarding the sole Liberal remaining in the legislature, Calgary Mountainview's Dr. Swann... "is there any reason that Rachel couldn't invite him to join the cabinet as the health minister?" Frankly, I don't see any constitutional barriers to her doing so...

While I doubt it would occur to the ANDP, it would be a bold way of indicating that the new political reality in Alberta was breaking from the old one - so long, of course, as it wasn't conditional on his crossing the floor.

It's an interesting idea and I wouldn't be surprised if comes up actually. Something like it was actually tried before in Saskatchewan - where Notley's current chief of staff Brian Topp used to work. Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for either the Saskatchewan Liberals or the individuals involved. After the 1999 provincial election the Saskatchewan NDP won exactly half of the seats in the legislature so to ensure that it were not vulnerable on any confidence motions the party proposed a coalition with the three-seat provincial Liberals. The three MLAs initially accepted the offer and Liberal leader [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Melenchuk]Jim Melenchuk[/url] and his colleagues joined the cabinet, with Melenchuk holding the important Education Ministry. Unfortunately grassroots Liberal party members were not impressed, rejected the coalition and ordered the MLAs to break it off. When Melenchuk and fellow Ron Osika refused, they were kicked out of the party and ended up joining the NDP and running for reelection under the orange banner in 2003. Both of them lost, but the Saskatchewan Liberals have not elected a member to the legislature since then, either.

Obviously Saskatchewan and Alberta are very different political cultures and the circumstances are different here, too (including that Notley has no need for Swann's support to ensure her government's survival). In the end, though, I doubt this would happen.

And given they have someone like Bob Turner who would make an excellent Health Minister why go scraping up the one Liberal who was lucky to survive his party's drubbing?

robbie_dee wrote:

bagkitty wrote:

A member of my family made an interesting observation regarding the sole Liberal remaining in the legislature, Calgary Mountainview's Dr. Swann... "is there any reason that Rachel couldn't invite him to join the cabinet as the health minister?" Frankly, I don't see any constitutional barriers to her doing so...

While I doubt it would occur to the ANDP, it would be a bold way of indicating that the new political reality in Alberta was breaking from the old one - so long, of course, as it wasn't conditional on his crossing the floor.

It's an interesting idea and I wouldn't be surprised if comes up actually. Something like it was actually tried before in Saskatchewan - where Notley's current chief of staff Brian Topp used to work. Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for either the Saskatchewan Liberals or the individuals involved. After the 1999 provincial election the Saskatchewan NDP won exactly half of the seats in the legislature so to ensure that it were not vulnerable on any confidence motions the party proposed a coalition with the three-seat provincial Liberals. The three MLAs initially accepted the offer and Liberal leader [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Melenchuk]Jim Melenchuk[/url] and his colleagues joined the cabinet, with Melenchuk holding the important Education Ministry. Unfortunately grassroots Liberal party members were not impressed, rejected the coalition and ordered the MLAs to break it off. When Melenchuk and fellow Ron Osika refused, they were kicked out of the party and ended up joining the NDP and running for reelection under the orange banner in 2003. Both of them lost, but the Saskatchewan Liberals have not elected a member to the legislature since then, either.

Obviously Saskatchewan and Alberta are very different political cultures and the circumstances are different here, too (including that Notley has no need for Swann's support to ensure her government's survival). In the end, though, I doubt this would happen.